Google expands patent arsenal with voice

In a story at Real Tech News, I learned todaythat Google has been awarded a patent for voice-based search routines.  The system combines voice recognition withGoogle's other search technologies:

“A system provides search results from a voice search query.The system receives a voice search query from a user, derives one or more recognition hypotheses, each being associatedwith a weight, from the voice search query, and constructs a weighted boolean query using the recognition hypotheses.The system then provides the weighted boolean query to a search system and provides the results of the search system toa user.” USPatent and Trademark Office Via A

The folks at Real Tech seem to be equating this with directory assistance services like411 that have existed for decades. But to me it seems more like the search-by-phone service Yahoo had up and running fora while a few years ago. 411 doesn't search web records either--it searches phone company databases of published phonenumbers, but does that difference warrant a patent? .


http://voip.weblogsinc.com/